


never dying (in a fate worse than death)

by BlackBat09



Category: X-Force (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25677067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBat09/pseuds/BlackBat09
Summary: the beauty of shiny new bodies is that it's so, so easy to forget the horrors the last one endured.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	never dying (in a fate worse than death)

“You look rough, kid.”

Logan doesn’t mean for it to be the first thing he says when he walks through the portal to the cozy little cave X-Force tends to meet in. Hell, he doesn’t expect Quentin to be there before most of the rest of the team, slouched in a chair as Sage types away at something on her tablet. He does look rough, though; Logan takes in the shadows beneath his eyes, the limp flop of his hair across his skull, the slight sheen of unwashed skin. Even on bad days, it’s rare to see Quentin quite so... vulnerable, used to the young telepath projecting everything from perfect skin to freshly-buzzed hair to vibrant, almost unnatural blue eyes.

Quentin raises his middle finger without much fanfare, and Logan shakes his head before settling into his own seat. He has moods, sometimes, like kids do, and Logan’s not about to nag Quire about it unless it starts affecting a mission, and, well, they haven’t gotten a mission yet. Can’t do much but let the kid sulk, he supposes, letting his eyes drift away as Hank steps through the portal and Logan offers him a nod, getting a smile in return before the man pads over to start talking eagerly about- something. God knows the man likes hearing himself.

Despite X-Force being a fairly small group, there’s enough of them, all together, to give the little cave a pleasant hum of life, though that may also be Krakoa himself. Logan swears he can hear the island breathe sometimes, loses himself in a rhythm, like a heartbeat, that he can never place. It gets to all his senses, really, not just his hearing: dizzying colors and patterns, the living earth beneath his feet and hands, the tastes and smells of so many mutants, so many new things as Krakoa creates whatever they need.

He can blame his overwhelmed senses for why he misses it, at first.

It’s not even that Logan misses it _entirely_. There’s a slight curl of complicated emotion as operations past and future are discussed: anxiety, the faintest hints of distress, honestly nothing too unusual for one of these gatherings. They’ve all seen some shit, sure, but it doesn’t make coming face to face with how much this damn world wants them dead any easier. Hell, it doesn’t make _dying_ easier on them; Logan should know, as many times as he’s done it, as many times as he’s clawed his way back from that final breath. A little fear’s good: it’ll keep everyone on their toes, maybe mean less death this next time around.

So he doesn’t miss it, he _misunderstands_ it. He takes the shift in the air as something normal, something healthy-

Until it isn’t.

Until the next breath brings the cloying smell of flowers, closer, headier, and the next the smell of wet earth, and the next _rot_ -

Until he sees Hank’s nose twitch, too, before he turns, hears Sage’s breath hitch as her lecture draws up short, can taste fear heavy on the air but not as heavy as the sickly sweet of death- 

He doesn’t know what to expect when he realizes it’s coming from Quire, sits upright in his seat and turns to look down the table at the teen who’s been strangely, eerily silent all meeting, but it’s not this. It makes him doubt his eyes for a moment before he realizes he probably _should_ , remembers what Quentin can do, among his myriad abilities, illusions of any and every sense, which has to be the only explanation.

Because the bodies hatched by the Five are, easily, perfection. Nobody’s had complaints, come out scuffed up or busted, and certainly not bearing any reminders of death, no scars or blemishes. Logan’s never seen them make _anything_ like the grisly sight wrapped around Quentin’s slim neck, marring the line of his throat with thick, overlapping ropes of pale pink scar tissue, dimly reflecting the light of the cave, the puckered edges deeper, saturated, some almost purpling where the bulging collagen flattens out against his skin once more. 

It doesn’t hold Logan’s eye for long, not when following the brutal scar leads him to ones all too familiar, the three lines that interrupt that perfect, violent ribbon around his throat, up his neck and the right side of his face. His stomach turns to see them there, red against the sickly pale of Quentin’s skin, remembering the motions that left them- should have left them- on someone else, in Logan’s head, but on Quire in reality. A different one, one who’d died, claws in his gut, body soon littered with bullet holes and burns as the fight raged on without him, as he bled out on the snow.

But the same one, he forces himself to admit, as he finds another set of perfect slices across Quentin’s scalp, dread or perhaps just _bile_ creeping up the back of his throat. No matter what the Five had done, to piece him back together, bear him anew, it is the same Quentin Quire, every time, with every mark, carried inside him, a weight Logan knows well, wouldn’t ever wish on Quentin- so why, _why_ , Logan wonders as his eyes trace more claw marks curled around Quentin’s arm, scars so fresh they look nearly raw, has it never dawned on him how _wrong_ this is?

Somehow, even the ones he left himself aren’t the worst of it, watching the way Quentin’s skin writhes with movement, just below the surface, something creeping through his body, waiting to be free. He can hear Domino’s breath shudder as the skin on Quentin’s arm bulges outward, straining until it finally cracks and tears, deep green stalks curling out of him, tight buds becoming waxy leaves or blooming into small pink flowers with yellow centers, each new opening releasing the scent of rotting vegetation and meat as they overflow with foliage. Flowers and fungus spill across his skin instead of blood, delicate petals and faintly glowing mushroom caps making a grotesque mimicry of it all, beautiful but wrong in a way that sets Logan’s teeth on edge.

Everything takes on a sickly hue as the plants continue to spread, an undertone of green to Quentin's skin, already washed out, now just stomach-churning, as the tiny lines beneath his skin consolidate, as he watches a thick root push up the side of his neck, slithering over his jaw before it branches out again. A stalk pushes from his ear, young shoots growing dark and woody as they bend beneath the weight of pale pink flowers, the slim branches swaying softly despite the still air. Still more crawl out of his mouth, the whimsical twist and curl of little green sprouts at odds with the pallor of his chapped lips, the continued squirm beneath his skin.

He hears someone choke faintly, swallow back a gag, but Logan's too preoccupied with the pound of his own heart and the sound- real? Quentin’s illusion? or entirely imagined, to match the horror he’s watching, trying to make sense of it? -of the stalk winding up the inside of his cheek, the quiet hiss of friction, wet with Quentin's flesh, curling around the piercing in his dimple before making its way over his cheekbone to almost cautiously emerge from his lower eyelid, pausing for a moment before spreading over his eye in a rush of green roots, a nauseating bulge creeping up until a bud pushes out of his eye socket. It blooms, large and round and deep pink, black center staring accusingly even as Quentin's uncovered eye stays aimed at his hands, fisted white-knuckled on the table, marred by Logan's claws and tangled in more of the little flowers that spill over his arms and from beneath his clothes.

"Quentin." He doesn't move when Hank says his name, but Logan watches as the claw marks on his skull split open, sprouting familiar red stalks that make his stomach turn, the fungus curving from his head like horns. " _Mr. Quire!_ "

His uncovered eye blinks hard and Quentin shudders slightly, petals and spores shaking loose as he lifts his head to look at the abject horror on the team's faces.

"What?" he asks, and his voice is rough, teeth stained with red in the brief flash Logan gets of his mouth. Hank looks apprehensive, for once in his life, looking to Logan before he hazards a reply.

"Are you quite alright, my boy?"

A sharp laugh startles past Quentin's lips, accompanied by a flurry of deep gold petals, scattering across the tabletop as Quentin licks his lips with a blackened tongue, shaking his head softly.

"’Course, Beastie. Why wouldn't I be?"

**Author's Note:**

> quentin's "garden"  
> begonias (arms/hands)- beware, dark thoughts  
> weeping willow (ear)- sadness  
> anemone (eye)- forsaken, sickness  
> poison fire coral (scalp)- highly toxic japanese fungus  
> marigold petals (mouth)- despair, grief
> 
> find me on twitter [@BlackBat09](https://twitter.com/BlackBat09) (nsfw)


End file.
